Lili’s bloggy

Finally I submitted 3 pictures to the AJC photo contest, phewwww… feel better since I made it on time - usually I always wait till the last minute to do everything and forget to do them.  So I submitted 3 pictures I took in Seattle:

For People, Animal and Place Category

They are not too good since I am not a great photographer but I really like them, especially the place category, I think that one is unique, and really cute. Good thing the photo contest is for amateur people, so I am one of them. Maybe I am not too amateur, maybe beginner.  If you want to participate in the contest, just click this link AJC’s photo contest http://www.ajc.com/news/content/travel/articles/stories/1005/photocontest.html

Actually for the animal category, I was going to submit this picture.
But I need a consent form from Puffy (lani’s beagle). I dunno if she will be happy to appear in a newspaper, and she might want to share the prize.  But can she ride inside the plane?  Is there doggy spa with this prize?  And overall she needs a ticket to fly back to Atlanta just to claim it.  Puffy, I miss you … your fatness, laziness and beaglesness.

So today I woke up and I should have studied for my final, but I was so lazy (as usual), and just stayed in front my Tv all day and watched watched watched. The page hasn’t moved since 3 hours ago. I am way unmotivated to study … thinking to go to Borders to study, but I know if I go there, I will end up reading manga and magazines, and when I finish with them, I will rush out to go home thinking that it is better to study at home. But if I stay at home, the TV distracts me soooooo much, even if I study inside my room, there is a TV and lots of manga surrounding me.

So I decided to enjoy my time by blogging and submitting photos to the contest.

Sorry for making lots of new blogs today. I have saved them in my mind and my lapi (my laptop) and did not have a chance to post them because of my busy schedule with interviews, homeworks, projects and tests.

Today, I received Fruits Basket No. 12 - yippeeee I am crazy about fruits basket!
I have its DVDs (presents from my Russian), calendar and also the mangas.  The story is getting better and I can’t wait for the next one - really impatient about it, so I decided to get No. 13 from the Japanese store near my place. Even though I cant read Japanese fluently, I will patiently find each word from dictionary … btw the Dvds stories are different from the mangas…my Russian might think I am crazy heheeh, but he knows I am crazy and a maniac about fruits basket. But not too maniac based on my wallet size now. So I went there and found not only no 13, but no 14, 15, 16, 17, and 18! Aaaarrrhgggggg, I don’t have time to translate all of those with my elementary japanese level. So without thinking much, I decided to get no 18. I like to read endings of stories.  Yup, but it never ruins the story for me because if the story has a good ending, it is worthwhile to read and spend time on it.  Otherwise why should i even spend time to read it?

So I got no 18, and I went through all, but didnt understand anything because it way too far ahead from the part that I read.  Dumpu dumpu Lili  <— this is what the Russian will say, because I always say it to him too.

I should have bought no 13, but my greed corrupted my bright idea to begin with… oooh well, I’ll have to wait till April until I get the No. 13 in English.  Now I can’t spend another cent on manga, if I want to travel with my parents.

I felt in love with this tv show, in love with its story, the main actress … the first girl I love so much to see, thinking that she is HOT hehehehhe.  Vasily is so jealous because he cant compete with her, even if he wears a cute skirt and pink lipstick (hehehheh can’t really imagine this …. )

Why did I fall in love with this show?  Because what she said when someone asked her "Why do you handle old cases?"  She said:  "Because they have been waiting for so long, and people should not be forgotten."

I always like detective stories. I think if I was not a programmer, I would want to be a detective or a lawyer … my dad told me long time ago that I can be a good lawyer because I can get my way using words … really tricky.  But I dunno if I am good enough at remembering all the different cases for my trials, and I don’t think I want to defend bad people.  But you never know if clients are bad people or not, maybe they are liars. I wish I could read other people’s minds.

Ok back to Cold Case - I am planning to get the collection of DVDs from seasons 1 until 3, proving how much I feel in love with the show.  But I am still just planning.

I like the main actress, especially her hair.  Maybe because the way she dresses really professional and still her hair is never tidy … makes her much more cute.
For the new season she changed her hair style.  I don’t really like it, but I still like the show - always makes me smile, especially the endings when the dead person smiles because the detectives solved the old case (the one no one else wanted to solve).

In a way, the show is really romantic and sentimental - thinking that someone still cares about others.

Vasily watched it once, and he fell into it too, especially the beginning music.  Yup, ex-music majors, always paying more attention to music than the story. He’s happy that he found the title of the song, but hasn’t found the song yet : (

This semester I’ve had the most travel of my entire life. I had 3 out-of-town interviews: Seattle, Twin Cities (Mineeapolis/St.Paul) and Charleston. Almost every weekend I went out of state, and stayed in different hotels. I learned something about interviews: the more interviews you go through, the more you prepare for the next one, and the more you know about your self. Every time you have to explain to them about yourself, your skills, and answer technical and non-techinical questions, you learn how to solve and divide and conquer your problem.  Even though I was tired through all these interviews, I am really grateful that I had lots of them. I did not pass some of the first interviews but sometimes I made it to the second interview.

At the end I had two offers that I debated for soo long liked so much because of the environments and also (hehe) the $$$. But one offered much higher $$$ than the other one and I saw that my career would grow faster.  I liked the starting date they offered, it made me be able to stay here in Atlanta with Vasily for awhile and we could then move to the new city together. I am afraid going to a new place alone … thinking of living there alone and knowing no one except people at my work.  But now no more, because Vasily will move to the same city after I move. I felt lucky for having everything - a new job, new city and a really nice boyfriend : )

Yipeee ….. I passed my first interview with microsoft and they asked me to come to Redmond for a second one. So i arranged my travel with them .. was really easy to take care of it.

I decided to go on Saturday, which gave me extra days to spend in Seattle and also gave me Sunday to prepare for the interview. Fortunately the Russian was able to company me there, thanks to him begging his dad for a plane ticket using some of the frequent-flyer miles he has collected.  So it was a nice time - spending a little holiday in Seattle, everything for free including plane tickets, hotel for 3 days and car rental.

My car rental

When we got there, we traveled through seattle, downtown, the space needle, the international park … and ended the day in pike’s public market - a really exotic international place.  I liked this fish market soo badly, because it reminded me of my hometown.  They sold lots of fresh fish, and the way they sold them was really interesting: everyone was singing and they threw fish from one person to other like the bartenders from the Coyote Ugly movie. The other cute thing I saw there were lots of flowers shops (I love flowers).  The prices were not too expensive, and they were really cute … not only roses, but lilies, daisies, sunflowers, etc., making the market so colorful and lovely.

However I didn’t like Seattle too much, I prefer San Fransisco still.

We spent all of saturday downtown. The next day, we went around Redmond, nothing much there, just looking around the surrounding area. We ended up eating in an Indian restaurant, and the Nan (bread) was sooo goood, the best Nan I’ve ever had. I love food if you don’t know me well, but I am a bit picky , not like the Russian who can eat everything …. We chatted with the waiter and asked him regarding the living costs in seattle (I like to know how much $$$ I have to ask for, before the interview…)

After our lunch, we went back to hotel and practiced lots of programming problems, just to make sure that I know how to solve them and to explain it clearly. The problem with technical questions is that sometimes you are too nervous and forget everything or maybe you want to solve it right away without thinking through all the possibilities. I read from the internet that Microsoft likes the interviewee to explain or give the algorithm before writing code. So I practiced that a lot, and during my practice, Vasily noticed that I always said "everyting like that" and made lots of assumptions without explaining them. Phew - good thing he noticed and let me know before my interview.

Monday, Vasily dropped me off at Building 19 (the hiring building), and I walked inside (btw, we went a day before to check out the building and took some pictures hehehheheh).

I was nervous, really nervous, and the lady at the front desk asked my name and gave me a nametag and asked me to wait until my hiring HR lady (Marie) came to pick me up. So I waited around 15 minutes until she came out, and she took me to her office and gave me some questions regarding my status and starting date …. she also gave me tips how to "divide and conquer" each question … really nice tips. She also asked me this as a warm-up:

   "Imagine you are a librarian in the Microsoft Library, and
    Bill Gates calls you one day and asks if he can borrow
    a book, and you check the database to see that the book
    is available.  So you tell Bill Gates to come to pick it up,
    but after you hang up, you realize that the book is not on
    the shelf.  What do you do?"

She wanted to know how I will divide and conquer the problem, and then she explained what mistakes I made. After finishing with her, she took me to the interview car, a honda car, really small one, and this car drives all the interviewees around every day.

I jumped into the car, and had a bit of conversations with the driver. He said that every day there are 100 people interviewing with Microsoft …. ooooo my God ….. to make the story short, I had 6 interviews, only 1 lunch break….. Microsoft’s cafeteria is way better than GT’s, and they have 13 different cafeterias!

I was so exhausted after the interviews.  I skipped the dinner with Microsoft because I had to go back to Atlanta since my flight departed at 10 pm, and the interview was finished at 7 - no time for dinner. But I ate a realy expensive dinner at the Seattle airport with the Russian (and Microsoft paid for us).